Thursday afternoon, five juveniles fled officers in a stolen vehicle and then attempted to hide in a residential area of Hawthorne.
According to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Sanchez, the incident began around 12:20 p.m.
The vehicle, which appeared to be a gray small SUV, perhaps a Kia Soul, traveled on the 110 and 405 freeways at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour, something made possible by the reduced traffic of the July 4 holiday.
Just before 1 p.m., the driver pulled off the freeway in Hawthorne and entered a residential area, at which point five people hopped out of the SUV and scattered.
By 1:10 p.m., the five people appeared to have entered residences, and authorities were searching the area and waiting for the suspects to emerge.
NBC Los Angeles interviewed a neighbor who witnessed the incident,
The driver returned to the freeway in Carson, where speeds reached 90 mph. The Soul weaved across lanes and onto the shoulder of the road as it passed other cars on a relatively wide-open Los Angeles freeway.
The driver went through several red lights before stopping in a Hawthorne neighborhood on Jefferson Avenue and W. 129th Street, where all occupants got out of the Kia simultaneously and sprinted between apartment buildings. They were taken into custody later Thursday afternoon.
“I don’t know what’s going on with our generation. They don’t think straight. There’s better things to do than steal a car and flash it around and then get chased and then arrested,” said a neighbor in Hawthorne.
Los Angeles is becoming progressively unsafe as more minors, enabled by soft-on-crime policies and a lack of accountability, are allowed to run free.
By failing to address the rise in juvenile delinquency, the city’s leaders are allowing chaos to thrive. There is no doubt that this troubling trend will only worsen without drastic measures and real consequences.
According to news reports, deputies quickly let some of the minors who were passengers go back to their parents following the car chase.
